What we miss in iOS 6: Ars reader edition

This is what we like to refer to as the patented "artificial intelligence blow-off."

Last week, we wrote about the smaller iOS features that Apple yanked out of our grubby little hands when iOS 6 was released. These were not major dealbreakers for most users—let's be honest, most of us upgraded to iOS 6 even with the new Maps—but they were annoyances that didn't really sit well with a number of users. The removal of app gifting, the difficulty in deleting music for iTunes Match users, the lack of mixed podcast-music playlists, the absence of Google Street View, and more have made us into sad pandas.

At the end of the piece, we asked Ars readers to open the floodgates and tell us what else they missed in iOS 6. As it turns out, readers had a much easier time coming up with little features they hoped to see added to iOS with the 6.0 release, but these hopes were dashed. Still, we poured through five pages of comments to dig out the best nuggets suggested by our readers—most of them are not "pie in the sky" wishes, but rather practical requests that they'd like to see show up in a future release. The sooner the better, too.

Let us choose alternate Siri voices

Apple's virtual assistant Siri already uses different voices depending on which region you're in. If you're in Australia, for example, Siri has a different accent from the Siri of the UK, which is different from the Siri of the US, and so on. Siri also speaks different languages—we hear that if you're an iOS user in Germany, Siri's German personality is a little more "forward" than its personality in other regions. Additionally, certain versions of Siri are male, while others are female.

"I'd also like to be able to choose Siri's voice separately from setting the region," Jim Jam wrote. "The US voice is female, while the UK voice is (quite a grumpy sounding!) male. Weird."

But end users don't actually get to choose what Siri's voice sounds like unless they change their region settings. Remember back in the day when you could choose between various sing-song voices on your Mac to read back your text? It doesn't have to just be for fun, either—some people want a different voice for reading back Maps directions versus performing other commands.

OrangeCream pointed this out in our comments: "I use Siri a dozen times a day and would like a choice of voices, especially in the turn-by-turn mode! Also being able to have different voices assigned to different things would be nice."

Dear Maps: Give us an ETA

Maps in iOS 6 has some problems—no one would argue with that, including Apple CEO Tim Cook. But those who drive often and rely on turn-by-turn driving directions have so far been (mostly) satisfied with how Maps implemented this new feature. Siri wakes up your phone anytime the next step is about to occur and reads aloud the directions to you—the app also shows you a visual indicator to show where you should be going next.

Still, there are ways this could be improved. Apple's Maps app does include traffic data if you select it, but it doesn't explicitly take traffic data into account when giving you directions. Wouldn't it be nice if Siri could look at the current traffic data and actually tell you how long it might take for you to get from point A to point B in your journey?

Metaphysical worded it best: "Actually another thing not oft-mentioned in iOS 6 maps is there's no running ETA on the turn-by-turn nav screen. Drives me crazy not to know if traffic is going to make me 10 minutes late or 30 minutes late."

Bring back the RSS!

This isn't an iOS-only problem—it's one that has seeped over from OS X Mountain Lion, which was released to the public in July. Ars readers are just plain irritated that Apple has removed its RSS support from Safari and doesn't look to be adding it back anytime soon. Who knew there were so many geeks who relied on Safari's RSS support in order to read their feeds? (As many of you remember, I'm not the biggest fan of RSS myself, but I use NetNewsWire as my client and I'm happy with it.)

We've received plenty of reader mail over this issue for months already, but RHEL6 made sure to point it out in the iOS 6 feature comments as well. "One issue that pisses me off is the lack of RSS support in both iOS 6 and Mountain Lion's Safari. I don't understand why all of Apple's current updates seem to remove more useful features than they add," he wrote.

Forget shuffle mode. How about album shuffle mode?

This is another request that dates back to the beginning of iOS—and music playing software in general. Users don't always want to listen to cherry-picked songs on shuffle all the time; sometimes, we like listening to whole albums the way the artist intended. But that doesn't mean we don't like a bit of surprise in our lives.

The Music app could benefit from some way to queue up a list of albums and then shuffle only among those albums. Have the software play the songs from each album in order, but when the album is done, randomly choose a new album.

"Two words: album shuffling. Song shuffling is a non-starter for classical music. C'mon, Apple, this is not an earth-shattering concept," zogus wrote.

Trials, trials, trials

Yes, users still want app trials or demos from the App Store—especially for those that aren't free. Developers complain about the lack of this feature as well. Some have run into problems with piracy because there's no easy way for users to try their apps before buying, while others deal with the annoyance of creating two separate apps that seemingly do the same thing, but one is "free" with ads.

It comes as no surprise, then, that this came up once again in our iOS 6 story comments. "Built-in support for one-time app trials in the App Store (eg: three day trial, one week trial, whatever)—please! Ideally developers can just flip a switch to enable a free time-limited trial version. No extra coding of a trial-specific version required," westcoastmatt wrote.

Miscellaneous

As usual, there were a handful of other requests that our readers had for a future release of iOS. Some were less likely than others, and some—well, we feel comfortable saying they're just never gonna happen. Still, the ideas are worth hearing:

Jim Jam would like to be able to delete Apple's built-in apps, such as Stocks or Compass. Wouldn't we all, Jim Jam, wouldn't we all.

Booda and DavidinAla both pointed out the frustrating experience they've had with Apple's new Podcasts app. Indeed, the Ars staff has seen their own frustrations with this app, too (hey, at least you can delete it!). While Apple may continue to make improvements to this one, some users pointed out that you can delete the Podcasts app to force podcasts to return to the Music app. You still can't make mixed music-podcast playlists, though.

neodorian wants Apple to open up iMessage to third-party developers. He finds it obnoxious when his friends mix-and-match SMS with iMessage, leaving him with e-mailed texts and confusing messages on his iPad. "I'd love to even be able to install a third party messaging app on my Android phone and iPad that handles GTalk as well as iMessage stuff the way it's [supposed] to be handled," he wrote.

88 Reader Comments

I hate the fact that I can't listen to all of the songs by a given artist in album order without intervention. Right now, if I want to listen to say Led Zeppelin II and then Led Zeppelin III, I have to first choose II listen to it all the way through and then choose III. The music app won't allow me to just hit play from the top and listen to first II and then III all the way through. This sucks. There needs to be an option in "All Songs" to play all songs in album order.

What's really silly is the fact that iTunes on the desktop does exactly that. If you select a song by an artist, it will continue playing the rest of the songs by that artist in album order.

Album shuffle is an outstanding idea I had not thought of previously. I always cringe when my iPhone breaks up a two-song pair (common in older rock), and I have to exit shuffle mode, find and reply the intro song in order to hear the set, before switching back to shuffle - definitely a damper to the mood created by the music.

I hate the fact that I can't listen to all of the songs by a given artist in album order without intervention. Right now, if I want to listen to say Led Zeppelin II and then Led Zeppelin III, I have to first choose II listen to it all the way through and then choose III. The music app won't allow me to just hit play from the top and listen to first II and then III all the way through. This sucks. There needs to be an option in "All Songs" to play all songs in album order.

What's really silly is the fact that iTunes on the desktop does exactly that. If you select a song by an artist, it will continue playing the rest of the songs by that artist in album order.

I know it doesn't fix the issue, but you could accomplish this with playlists.

The new maps doesn't include transit directions. That makes it a non-starter for me. The car stuff is useless to me. I'm sticking with iOS 5 as long as possible.

And yet, Google Maps on the website is practically the same when it comes to transit directions. On a side note, I don't really see why people are complaining that badly about RSS. There are tons (and I mean tons) of iPhone and Mac apps both on their respective App Stores and individual developers' websites. Just a simple Google search about "RSS iphone" or similar would suffice. Are there really that many people clueless that third party options exist?

The new maps doesn't include transit directions. That makes it a non-starter for me. The car stuff is useless to me. I'm sticking with iOS 5 as long as possible.

And yet, Google Maps on the website is practically the same when it comes to transit directions.

There is no way (AFAIK) to get address links - from the web, from email, from text - to open up in google maps on the web. Instead I'd have to use the tedious, and error prone, cut and paste mechanism.

Yes, this is a desirable goal, but I suspect they are trying to get Siri 'perfected' before they introduce alternate voices and the associated alternate pronunciations.

I have a Garmin GPS that has incorrect pronunciations for common things. For example:

- The British voice announces "King Dr" not as "King Drive" but as "King Doctor".- The Australian voice announces "Conn." not as "Connector", but as "Connecticut".

These are minor annoyances (and somewhat amusing), for sure, but I suspect the quest for the optimal solution is compounded by Apple's desire for high quality experiences and for human-sounding voices.

And yet, Google Maps on the website is practically the same when it comes to transit directions.

Yes, practically the same. Except it's not a native app, so it'll refresh at Safari's whims. Except it doesn't integrate with the OS at all, so I can't easily tell it that I want to go to an Contact's address. Etc.

I hate the fact that I can't listen to all of the songs by a given artist in album order without intervention. Right now, if I want to listen to say Led Zeppelin II and then Led Zeppelin III, I have to first choose II listen to it all the way through and then choose III. The music app won't allow me to just hit play from the top and listen to first II and then III all the way through. This sucks. There needs to be an option in "All Songs" to play all songs in album order.

What's really silly is the fact that iTunes on the desktop does exactly that. If you select a song by an artist, it will continue playing the rest of the songs by that artist in album order.

As someone else suggested, you can accomplish this with Playlists.

You might also consider looking into the 3rd party music apps in the Store. There may be some that are more album-centric than iTunes.

The new maps doesn't include transit directions. That makes it a non-starter for me. The car stuff is useless to me. I'm sticking with iOS 5 as long as possible.

And yet, Google Maps on the website is practically the same when it comes to transit directions.

Assuming you mean public transit, it's there on maps.google.com. Car, public transit, walking, and biking.

Faramir wrote:

There is no way (AFAIK) to get address links - from the web, from email, from text - to open up in google maps on the web. Instead I'd have to use the tedious, and error prone, cut and paste mechanism.

Not on the computer, but I just sent myself an address via email and it works on my phone and tablet. Just tap the address and it opened Google Maps. Android, of course, but any problems past that are Apples.

And for the iMessage thing, iMessage is a stupid service anyway. What does it bring to the table not already adequately handled by XMPP? (Or any number of other messaging protocols, for that matter.) The supposed advantage is the ability to seamlessly send SMS or iMessage...which is easily handled with just a but of work on the server anyway.

I hate the fact that I can't listen to all of the songs by a given artist in album order without intervention. Right now, if I want to listen to say Led Zeppelin II and then Led Zeppelin III, I have to first choose II listen to it all the way through and then choose III. The music app won't allow me to just hit play from the top and listen to first II and then III all the way through. This sucks. There needs to be an option in "All Songs" to play all songs in album order.

What's really silly is the fact that iTunes on the desktop does exactly that. If you select a song by an artist, it will continue playing the rest of the songs by that artist in album order.

This, a million times this. It's been a gripe I've had since my first iPod. Further, I really want my albums sorted chronologically and not alphabetically. Often an artist's style changes gradually over the years, and an album from 1964 has no place next to an album 2008.

There is no way (AFAIK) to get address links - from the web, from email, from text - to open up in google maps on the web. Instead I'd have to use the tedious, and error prone, cut and paste mechanism.

Not on the computer, but I just sent myself an address via email and it works on my phone and tablet. Just tap the address and it opened Google Maps. Android, of course, but any problems past that are Apples.

It isn't a question of blame, so much as a question of whether or not to upgrade.

I don't think you have to worry about whether or not to upgrade from iOS 5 to iOS 6 on your androids.

In iOS 5, if you go to your lists of contacts, you can go into each one individually with one tap. So I can go to the list of folders, and then go into just Personal, or Work, or Work-Shared, or Support. Now, tapping a list will add it to the surrent view, or remove it. So if you just want to see your personal contacts, you need to deselect all the other lists.

It would be OK, but only if a double tap at the top of the screen would zoom you to the search bar.

What about better app management? They need to steal from Android, and toot sweet. There should be an app drawer with every app installed on your phone (no arbitrary limit), alphabetically sorted (at least as an option). From there, you should be able to put the app on one of your home screens if you want, or just leave it in the app drawer.

That's not even mentioning the two crashes that happened, both after I had spent several minutes arranging my apps; afterward, random apps had filled up all the spots that I had cleaned up.

He finds it obnoxious when his friends mix-and-match SMS with iMessage, leaving him with e-mailed texts and confusing messages on his iPad.

Sounds like a problem with his friends, not his technology.

The problem with that attitude is that it hinders usability. If you blame everything on user error then you'll never push the system to be more friendly. It's cliche to say that everything should be idiot-proof, but it's a good standard to strive for and it makes the experience a lot more pleasant.

What about better app management? They need to steal from Android, and toot sweet. There should be an app drawer with every app installed on your phone (no arbitrary limit), alphabetically sorted (at least as an option). From there, you should be able to put the app on one of your home screens if you want, or just leave it in the app drawer.

That's not even mentioning the two crashes that happened, both after I had spent several minutes arranging my apps; afterward, random apps had filled up all the spots that I had cleaned up.

Windows Phone has a similar feature where all apps are listed alphabetically, and you can pin or uninstall each one individually. It really is something that should be common to every platform because it just makes so much sense to include it.

Does anybody know if there is an app that makes a quiz out of the songs you have on your phone? You know, it'll show you an album cover and 4 possible answers for the album's artist. It will play 10 seconds of a certain song and you have to guess its name. I remember the first iPods had a game like this. Is something like this possible on an iPhone?

My ideal iPod interface would be three buttons: next, shuffle all, and play this whole album start to finish and then switch back to playing random tracks once the album is done. And the artist and track information would be readable from more than one foot away. Also iTunes should have the ability to choose to only sync albums, and skip syncing tracks that don't go to a full album (ie, look at how many tracks are on the full album, and see if they all exist, though skip syncing tracks that are unchecked).

If anyone has ideas on scripts or other ways of syncing only full albums, I'd love to hear how. I'd accept only syncing albums with more than 3 tracks of the same album or something like that if that made scripting easier.

Not an overly big issue but the inconsistency with the styling between the music app (silver-ish theme) and the locked screen icons (white buttons and blue bar) kind of bug me. I'd thought Apple likes to have everything in the same theme.

Another note: searching in the iTunes store. 1 blade of results at a time is painful and frustrating way to search for an app.

No ETAs? What's the ETA I've been following while driving across Utah all day today?

It doesn't display by default. As was noted in the post right above you (you probably missed it, I'm not trying to be a jerk), you have to tap the screen once get the ETA (and the status bar, which includes important information like, say, THE CLOCK) to appear on the screen. Completely unintuitive, but once you know how to make it appear, easy enough.

Some of the apps can't even be put into folders/groups/whatever those things are called. I have one called "Apple Junk", but I can't put Newsstand into it because that's apparently not allowed for that app. That means someone at Apple had to decide it shouldn't be allowed and then someone spent time coding it up. What crap.